Reactions to objects failing vs. not

posted by: Ms. Martin 31 January 2011 6 Comments

Objects have failed
Objects have not failed

Have objects failed? Do you trust these guys’ opinions? Please share your thoughts!

(10 votes, average: 2.90 out of 5)

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I think that the points made by the “Objects Have Failed” article are all valid. The world of programming has become overly focused on a small subset of languages, which do do some things better than others, but it obviously hinders development. The idea of sticking with ideas which are quickly becoming antiquated is foolish.

The other article made no good points. It employs the logical fallacy of argumentum ad populum, claiming that OO is good because lots of people use it. When considering this as a response to the other argument (likely, as they were written on the same day and the title “Objects Have Not Failed” seems like a response) it doesn’t address any of the key points and only provides evidence for a fact accepted by the negative argument.

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Eamon on January 31, 2011 at 10:53 am

I don’t agree with Guy Steele’s argument that objects have succeeded simply because everyone is using OOP. I do not think that Java and other OO languages have solved the major crises of programming, in particular encapsulating data. Java is too messy to be a long-term solution to our software problems.

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seth on January 31, 2011 at 10:58 am

I found it rather interesting that the person speaking for object-oriented programming was one of the designers of Scheme, which is functional, not object-oriented.

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Kian on January 31, 2011 at 10:59 am

If I were to make my decision on just these two articles, I would have to say that objects have failed; Gabriel makes the far stronger argument that objects no longer serve the purpose they were meant to serve, and stifle innovation as well. Steele, on the other hand, argues that objects allow more people to enter the world of programming, as well as using argumentum ad populum to back up another point. (Eamon, stop stealing my Latin)

Of course, that point is only fallacious if the statement “OO succeeds when it is universal” is not true. In addition, when I take other things into account, I must back up Steele. Gabriel’s secondary argument that objects stifle innovation is based around bifurcation, assuming that the world can either innovate OR use OOP, but not both. His other argument is based around the ideal that “if it strays from its intended purpose, it is useless/has failed”. Velcro would like to differ. So would Silly Putty. And many other inventions.

All in all, there’s little clash between the two to accurately make a decision which is little more than an opinion, rather than empirical fact.

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King Xia on January 31, 2011 at 11:00 am

See, it took me a few minutes to figure out why everyone disagreed with Steele, till I realized I was going off of the biology definition of success vs. failure: if there’s more of something, it’s more successful. Which, to be fair, might be what Steele is arguing- though he jumps pretty quickly to the point that it’s good for that reason. As has been discussed, that’s bad: non-object-oriented still may be more useful, promising, low-sodium, juicy and tender, etc.

I get what Steele is saying, but agree that having a default mono-language is bad for new ideas- unfortunately, that doesn’t seem very feasible. Maybe we should just unseat Java’s throne; I don’t know much about other languages, but perhaps Java is the problem and not OO? From what I’ve heard of it, I still think it might be better if we just made Python the norm, but that also might just be a matter of simplicity. Simplicity, as- …uh, Steele, I think?- said, has all sorts of great benefits.

On another note, I certainly don’t have a profound computer education outside of this class, but I can’t have been the only one who found parts of Gabriel’s article a little scary?
“But with C++ and Java, the dynamic thinking fostered by object-oriented languages was nearly fatally assaulted by the theology of static thinking inherited from our mathematical heritage and the assumptions built into our views of computing by Charles Babbage whose factory-building worldview was dominated by omniscience and omnipotence.” Okay, okay, Mr. Gabriel, I believe you, just please put down the gun.

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Georgia on January 31, 2011 at 9:05 pm

I think that this is a debate that is fairly moot. Like most issues where they present only two options, I think that the actual truth lies somewhere in the middle. I agree that OO is probably not THE solution. To say that it has failed is probably not true though. They have been used enough in our very advanced computing world that they must have some merit. they may not be around for a long time, but for now, OO works.

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Adam on February 1, 2011 at 10:05 am

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